


Lucky Star

by Rhyo



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 07:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhyo/pseuds/Rhyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anthropology undergrad Blair Sandburg's first big field expedition doesn't exactly go as planned. Fate has something to teach him, but Jim's not the only one who can do denial and repression.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky Star

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the beginning of Gulf War I, which doesn't exactly work out in the canon TS timeline. I'm also aware that an Apache is an attack helicopter and wouldn't be used for this purpose, but, hey, tell the TS writers that. Think of this as that other model of Apache. But we're all friends here, so ignore that and go along with it, pretty please.
> 
> Written in mid-2003 for the Sentinel_Thursday Challenge #8, "Blair or Jim as a teenager". As I remember it, Sentinel_Thursday had a word limit and I was always a little too verbose.
> 
> This had several names before arriving at "Lucky Star" and my favorite was "Blair of Arabia" but I settled on this instead. It's not exactly a missing scene, it just deals with an offhand comment that Blair made in an episode about his previous experience with helicopters. I also like the "Blair as shaman" concept and wanted to play with the idea that Fate was nudging him toward his Sentinel early.
> 
> Pretty sure that this was inspired by Jane Mailander's wonderful "100 Minutes" (along with her "Scars That Remain," two of my favorite fandom stories).

He'd spent as much of the day out of the sun as he could, sleeping, but the nervous organic lump at the top of his spine that housed his survival instincts was screaming at him to get up off the ground and keep moving. Away from the tanks and the soldiers, which meant away from the small village, the friendly family that had housed him and the cool green oasis at the center of the village. No amount of rational discussion could dissuade those instincts from pushing him to run; his perfectly ordered arguments about his lack of a map, not to mention his lack of even a rudimentary sense of direction, his rapidly dwindling supply of food and water and the leg cramps that had started the day before had thus far failed to stop his panicked run through the arid wadis.

He opened the waxy food packet and groaned. A small piece of flat bread and honey, a dried apricot, three dates and a handful of pistachios. The last of his food. He shook his canteen and was rewarded by a pitiful slosh; he'd been trying to conserve water, but he hadn't planned on being on the run this long. He snorted. He hadn't planned on being on the run at all. He groaned again, hiking the coarse burnoose he wore up so he could lay his forehead on his jean-clad knees. It wasn't his first field expedition, but it was the first to go quite so spectacularly wrong. One of Naomi's friends had been obsessed with TE Lawrence and the movie Lawrence of Arabia, so that as a child he'd seen that long, long movie several times and secretly thought that it had been exciting and dashing. Now, sitting in the hot, rocky sand in the bottom of a wadi, hiding in fear of his life, covered with drying sweat and dirt and low on food and water, the reality seemed far less wonderful than the movies or books.

"Big surprise, there," he said aloud and then jolted upright when a large lizard darted out from under the closest rock, startled into motion by his voice. He eyed the lizard. It was probably edible and he'd eaten worse-- insects and grubs-- on a previous expedition. He had his pocket knife and could probably catch it and kill it, but he didn't think he was desperate enough-- yet-- to eat raw lizard. Besides, he felt a certain kinship with the terrified reptile. If he thought he could fit, he might have burrowed under a rock, too.

Resolutely he stood up and began to walk, eating his last remaining food and hoping like hell he was going the right direction, away from the soldiers. As soon as it was completely dark he'd be able to see the stars. The first night, when he'd run from the house in such a panic, he'd just been running without direction until his attention had been caught by a bright star, low on the horizon. The star had felt like a friendly beacon and he'd been following it for two nights now.

He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, walking steadily, and let his mind wander. He wondered again if picking anthropology, with its field work in exotic areas, had been such a smart move. He'd liked the idea of being out in the world, among different people and cultures, of travel and discovery. On his 15th birthday, one of Naomi's boyfriends who owned a bookstore had given him a first edition of Sir Richard Burton's "Sentinels of Paraguay" and it had fired his imagination to the possibility of discovering a living tribal Sentinel. That prospect had given his travels a new meaning. And anthropology had seemed tailor-made for him in other ways; as a child he had followed his beautiful, restless mother in her wanderings throughout the world, through commune, co-operative, collective and kibbutz. Often the only child in the group or at least the most recently arrived, he'd learned quickly to observe the native customs and to fit himself in on the fringes of the group. Now, as an anthropology student, he had technical terms describing kinship, hierarchies and tribal structures to explain the adaptations he'd learned to make. As useful as anthropology had been in explaining the groups of his childhood, none of his studies had prepared himself for his current situation: alone and terrified, lost in a maze of hot, sandy flood-cut gullies and washes. 

He thought about the warrior tribes that he had studied and the various rites of passage that young men in those tribes endured, drawing parallels to his own situation. Usually the young warrior-candidates prepared themselves for vision quests by fasting and ritual cleansings-- he wasn't sure the two days of dysentery he'd endured in the village counted, though he suspected it had the same net effect-- and then they were sent out, to triumph or fail. Except that even if he triumphed and managed to find his way out of the arid wilderness, he didn't have a proud extended family of warriors waiting for him at the conclusion of this rite of passage; none of the other expedition members had a clue where he was. He fixed his eyes on the bright star and kept walking.

He walked for several hours, squinting down at the path as he walked by star light, stumbling occasionally on the rocks, trying not to let the phrase "do or die" bounce around in his head any more than strictly necessary. He paced his water intake, drinking only enough to wet his mouth and let a few drops cool his throat. He knew he was getting tired and needed to stop and rest, but he was afraid that once he sat down he wouldn't be able to get up again. 

A faint sound, like the ticking of a pebble falling down a rock-and-sand slope, sent his already tense system into adrenaline overdrive. Heart pounding, he jerked to a stop and started to tell himself to breathe, even as he saw a knife swing in an upward arc in front of him, the long blued blade barely visible in the bright starlight, stabbing into where he would have been if he had taken another step. He pulled away as a hand grabbed his burnoose and tangled in the loose folds of cloth and he heard a ripping sound as the knife slashed through the cloth, close to his throat. Instinctively he rolled to the ground in the opposite direction.

"Holy shit!" Blair yelped. "Watch it, man!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Blair saw a large, dark figure twisting toward him and saw the dulled glint off of a large hunting knife. He reached down and grabbed two handfuls of sand, hoping to throw them in his attacker's eyes in what he knew was likely to be a futile gesture to escape. 

But the dark figure had stopped advancing as soon as Blair had spoken. "You’re an American?" it whispered.

Blair dragged himself up to his knees, pushing the ripped burnoose off. "Well, yeah, more or less. I mean, I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, really, but I'm from the US." He blinked once and looked closer at the large man, who was wearing desert camouflage and had streaked his face with paint. "Cool, is this where we do one of the identity and password things based on obscure American popular culture?"

"What?"

"You know, where I say I like Betty Grable and the Chicago Cubs and you ask me to name the starting line-up of the Detroit Steelers."

"The Steelers? That's one lame-ass team. Me, I'm a Cowboys fan. And who is Betty Grable?"

"What, are you serious? You don't know who Betty Grable was? Oh, man, that is just sad. She was the precursor of an entire American male cultural experience, one that worked a version of ritualized prostitution into a socially acceptable outlet--"

"What the fuck are you talking about, kid? Did you get hit on the head?"

An amused, deep voice came from the shadows on Blair's left. "No, he's making sense, just in a long-winded and obscure way. Stand down, Sergeant."

An even bigger man stepped out of the shadows. He had black hair and the palest blue eyes Blair had ever seen. Behind him three other men appeared out of shadow, all of them dressed in desert gear and carrying automatic weapons, pointed straight at Blair. "Perimeter secure, Captain. He was alone," one of the other men reported.

"Oh, uh, hey there, good to see you, you know? I've been trying to get out of here for a few days--"

One of the men laughed. "Looks like you caught yourself a prisoner, here, Sarge. He doesn't look old enough to be out of the house, much less walking around in enemy territory."

His attacker had sheathed his knife. "What's your name, kid?"

Blair put his hands up in a gesture of surrender, the way he'd seen in countless movies. "Blair Sandburg. From Cascade, Washington."

The sergeant looked out at the dry landscape. "Well, Blair Sandburg, from Cascade, Washington, you just got yourself captured by US Army Rangers in Iraq. Doesn't look much like Cascade here," he stepped closer to get a good look at Blair's face. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Twenty-one," Blair lied, as smoothly as possible.

The man snorted. "Yeah, yeah, now pull the other leg, kid. How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"Oh, baby," the sergeant said, grinning, "I love it when you pull it that hard. Do it again."

"Okay, okay. Almost eighteen."

"You're not even eighteen? Jee-sus, kid, where's your mother?"

"I'm an emancipated minor," Blair scowled back. "I'll be a junior at Rainier University in the fall."

The tall Ranger captain stepped in between them, his arms folded. "The direction you were headed, you weren't going to make it back to Rainier University in the fall. At least not in one piece. So either you are a spy or you have a spectacularly bad sense of direction."

"Ahhh," Blair said, laughing nervously, "let's go with option b, there."

The captain walked around him, studying him carefully. "Why are you here?"

Blair twisted to follow the captain. "I'm with an anthropological group from Rainier, here to study two groups that we think are the last remnants of the Bani Khalid tribe. They were an incredible warrior society and once ruled this territory from Persia to Qatar, but in the 1920's, when the oil fields were coming into heavy production, the British set up a Protectorate and usurped--"

"Stop!" The Ranger captain held up his hand. "Breathe! And the ancient history lesson is great, Professor, but haven't you been paying attention to modern history? Kuwait is about to become a war zone and you are currently sitting about five miles from the front line. How did you end up out here, alone?"

"We were staying in Al'Azherbak, a remote village near the border with Iran. I don't exactly know what day today is, but a few days ago, Professor Farhad and the others went out to one of the field sites to interview an older tribal chieftan. I had, ummm, the flu so they... they left me behind with the family we'd been staying with. They were supposed to be back that night or the next day, but they... weren't. Then the next night we woke up and heard tanks coming into the village. The soldiers were going house-to-house, waking the villagers up and pulling them out of the house. So I split. I've been out here a couple days."

"You didn't wait to see what they wanted?"

"Hey, angry guys with tanks and guns, man, it wasn't really a good idea to hang around and hope they were there for some kind of relief effort. The State Department warned us when we got here that there might be some kind of response to the on-going Iraqi take-over of Kuwait, but we got the impression it was months away. When I saw armed troops in the village, I figured something bad was going down. I thought they would... hurt the people I was staying with if they found me there, so I grabbed some food and water and took off, out the back, and down into the wadis. I guess that was a couple of days ago."

The sergeant snorted. "You've been out here, alone, for days, and you haven't been picked up by an Iraqi patrol? They must have a thousand men out here. We've almost been caught twice."

"Well," Blair chuckled, "Just lucky, I guess, but I am an anthropologist, and when I was in the jungle--"

"Incoming fire!"

Blair watched as the men around him dived to the ground. His ears registered the sounds that ripped through the night around him, but his brain was sluggish on the identification of the sounds. He'd seen enough war movies to know that it was pretty close to the sound of automatic weapon fire. But it was louder and much more terrifying than it had ever been in a movie, and surely no one could be shooting at him; he was a peace-loving undergraduate student in anthropology, not a threat to anyone, why....

A large hand reached up, grabbed him hard enough to dig into the skin of his abdomen and yanked him down so that he hit the ground hard enough for his breath to leave him in a painful wheeze. "Jeee-sus, kid," a harsh voice whispered in his ear, "what did you think you were doing?"

"Was that-- were they-- they were shooting at us," Blair stammered as he found himself on the ground between the sergeant and the captain, both of whom were glaring at him. 

The captain moved aside and rolled Blair underneath a small ledge that sheltered the floor of the wadi. "Stay here until I come for you," he hissed. "Don’t move!" Blair nodded dumbly and the captain gave him a little shake. "Say "yes, Captain Connel, sir!" when you answer me."

"Yes, Captain Connel, sir," Blair repeatedly dutifully, equally torn between rebellion and terror. He felt the captain move away, and heard him whispering to his team.

Blair shifted slightly in his claustrophobia-inducing sand cave, inadvertently brushing sand into his face and hair. He heard the rustling sound of fabric as the Rangers moved away into the night, and then, a few minutes later, distant shouts and gunfire. Then nothing. He lay still for a few minutes, his heart pounding, until he couldn't stand the waiting any longer. Cautiously he rolled out from under the ledge and sat up, straining to hear anyone around him. "I don't believe this," he mumbled to himself. "Someone was shooting at us. Shooting at us. Oh, man!"

He stood up, uncertain of the direction the Rangers had gone, and paused. Over the lip of the wadi he could see the light of the star he'd been following. The star that had led him to the front lines but had also led him to the Rangers. He laughed to himself. The star was batting .500, which was actually pretty good. He walked to the edge of the wadi and inched up the side, cautiously peering up over the edge.

The Rangers were moving back toward him, double-time, but two of them were supporting a third, limp between them. Blair pulled himself the rest of the way up the slope and scrambled forward to help.

"Get down!" The annoyed Ranger captain grabbed Blair's shirt and pulled him down into the wadi. "You had orders to stay where you were. People in my command obey my orders, remember that next time." Connel let go of him with another small shake.

The men carrying the wounded man laid him down on the floor of the wadi. Connel shrugged off his pack and opened it, pulling out a first aid kit. The wounded man opened his eyes and groaned, catching Connel's hand. "Hey, Tonio, it's gonna be okay. It's a shoulder wound, you've lost a lot of blood, but I think it's pretty clean." Alvarez took out his combat knife and sliced Tonio's jacket and undershirt off.

Blair turned away from the sight of blood and gore and just listened as Connel soothed the wounded man and efficiently cleaned and dressed the wound. Connel was a big man but his voice was gentle and almost hypnotic, the warm tones radiating trustworthiness and comfort.

When Connel was done, he stood up and pulled his men to order, including Blair in his instructions. "Alvarez - it's your watch. Johansen and Clayton will come with me to radio for an extraction and then scout and secure a pick-up sight." The captain moved to stand in front of Blair. "And you stay here, with Tonio. This time I expect you to stay where I left you, got it?"

Blair swallowed hard. He'd never seen so much blood before and the metal tang of it was almost overwhelming, but he nodded and sat down next to Tonio. The captain gave him a long hard look and then seemed satisfied with whatever he saw. He nodded to his two men and they slipped silently out of the wadi.

Though Blair had often had to be responsible for himself while he was growing up, he'd never had to be responsible for anyone else, and especially not someone who was bleeding from a gunshot wound. If Tonio needed more help, he had no idea what to do.

The man on the ground moved restlessly and groaned, calling out for his captain. When Blair had needed comforting as a child, the kind of comfort that had meant the most had come from body contact. Gently he lifted Tonio's head and scooted forward until he could cradle Tonio's head on his lap. "Tonio," he whispered, "it's going to be okay." He could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. "All we have to do is wait and breathe. We can do that, right?" He put his hand on the unconscious man's chest. "Just breathe in and out, nice and slow..."

To his amazement, Tonio began to breathe in sync with him and both of their heart rates steadied and slowed. "That's great, man, we'll just sit here and breathe. Strong and steady, we're okay, we're okay." Blair repeated his new mantra over and over.

Blair didn't hear the sound that alerted him, but Alvarez suddenly bent down next to him. "Not a word, not a movement, you understand? From either of you," he whispered, nodding his head at Tonio. At Blair's nod, Alvarez slipped back into the shadows further down the wadi.

Tense minutes dragged by and then Blair heard a series of soft whistles and Captain Connel and his men slid down the wall of the wadi. 

"We're in luck tonight. There's a ride less than fifteen minutes from here and we've got a secure landing zone. The pilot's got our vector and is coming in low and hot, so let's go."

Connel crouched next to him. "How's he doing?"

Blair looked down at the man in his lap. "I, uh, don't think much change. He was calling for you and he seemed restless, so I--"

"You did good, Professor. Okay, men, let's move." Blair helped them lift the mostly unconscious man and the all struggled forward together.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

The helicopter was just touching down on a large rock plateau as they crested the top of the plateau. Blair could see the relief in the men around him; medical care and safety were a short ride away. Blair wasn't sure he shared that relief. He'd never been fond of flying and a helicopter looked like all the worst parts of airplanes lumped together. He hung back and the others rushed forward and slid the cargo door open. The huge rotors continued to spin as the pilot kept the craft ready to lift off, and dust and sand swirled around them. Blair caught only bits of shouted conversation over the noise of the rotors.

Captain Connel grinned at the pilot and shouted greetings. "Go Airborne."

"Hoo-yah, baby." The pilot shouted and grinned back, craning his head around to look at the wounded man as the other Rangers lifted him into the cargo area. "Bad?"

"Not good, lost a lot of blood. Get us to base ASAP and he'll be okay."

"You're one lucky sonuvabitch, Connel; a big sandstorm kicked up a couple of hours ago, or I'd be snug in my own base instead of this far north. You'd have been out a ride." The pilot gestured over at Blair. "You got a mascot since last time. Where'd you find him?"

The captain snorted. "Out for a midnight stroll in a war zone." He grabbed Blair's arm and pulled him closer. "Come on, Professor, climb in so we can get the hell out of here." Reluctantly, Blair stepped up into the craft.

The helicopter pilot eyed him curiously. and shouted over the rotor noise. "You must be the missing university student HQ was kicking up a fuss over."

"Yeah, that'd probably be me," he said, shouting back and ducking his head low to keep as far from the spinning rotor blades as possible. "Blair. Blair Sandburg." He held his hand out to the pilot, who laughed and shook it.

"Lt. Matt Brown, 101st Airborne. Sit up here with me, kid. We've got a wild ride ahead of us tonight." The pilot pulled him into the navigator's seat and handed him a head set as the Army Rangers climbed into the back of the helicopter. 

Blair cleared his throat. "You know, heights are, like, not my favorite thing." he shifted uneasily as the helicopter leapt off the ground. "Maybe I should go back and sit with the other guys."

The pilot looked over his shoulder at the Rangers, who were furiously tearing into the well-stocked and complete medical supply kit as they treated their wounded team member, replacing the temporary field bandages. "I think you'll be better off up here with me, out of their way. It'll be okay, I promise."

"Right. Okay. Uh-huh. I can do this." Blair gripped the shoulder belt with one hand and the door webbing with the other. "I can do this," he repeated, closing his eyes.

"Hey, Professor, you should probably open your eyes. You're looking a little green there and I don't carry barf bags. You'll be better off if you just keep your eyes forward, on the horizon."

Blair peered out the windscreen into the darkness. "What horizon?"

"See up there, where there are stars?"

"Yeah."

"See down there, where there aren't stars? That would be the horizon, where it changes."

Blair laughed, in spite of his fears. "Yeah, okay, I get it now." The cockpit lights were dim and his night vision was beginning to re-adjust. He looked out the bubble windscreen at the quiet night sky. The stars were clear and bright, and Blair tried to recognize constellations. To his right, the sky was a dark blur, neither stars or ground visible. "What's that over there," he asked the pilot through the headset.

The pilot ducked his head down to look over Blair's shoulder. "Oh, shit." He reached forward and flipped the radio channel. "This is Echo Foxtrot Charlie seven-niner requesting tactical weather." He repeated the code and then tilted his head sideways, listening to the answer. "Hey, Connel," the pilot shouted back, pulling his headset off.

The Ranger captain moved up to squat between the two front seats. "Yeah?"

"Trouble between us and the northern base! That sandstorm is moving our way fast, we're going to have to cut west to avoid it. You got any intel on force locations and strength?"

"Yeah! Don't go any further west. Any further and we're in Iraq, right over the front-line troops."

"No choice, we can't risk the sandstorm. We gotta cut west."

"Why, so we can get shot down? Get us out of here!"

"Take your pick, Captain, risk getting shot out of the sky or fall out when the engines clog with sand. The first is a maybe, the second is a certainty."

"Can you set it down, ride out the storm on the ground?"

"I've seen these storms rip an unprotected helo to pieces. I'm not ready to send this baby back to the taxpayers just yet. Besides, we're 150 klicks from the nearest base and I don't plan on walking home like a grunt."

The captain sighed. "You're the driver. Just get us home in one piece, okay?"

"Do my best. Better make sure your man is strapped in tight and then you might wanna hold on tight to any body parts you particularly value, 'cause the ride is gonna get rough from here." Lt. Brown looked over at Blair and yanked his harness even tighter, until Blair couldn't move. "Don't worry, Professor, we're about 40 minutes from base. I'll get you back."

Blair nodded and then gulped as the pilot pulled the stick hard left and Blair felt his axis of orientation shift when the ground went from being directly below him to somewhere on his left. After a few minutes the pilot leveled out and the ground and Blair's stomach settled back into their respectively correct positions.

Once the craft settled back into level flight, Blair let himself drift. He was hungry, dirty and tired, but he wasn't lost anymore and he was headed back to a safer place. He rolled his head, stretching his neck, and concentrated on the breathing and centering exercises Naomi had taught him when he was old enough to sit still and learn them. Calm wouldn't come this far above the ground, though, and his eyes soon opened. The sandstorm front still paralleled them on the right, looking, if anything, bigger and more menacing than it had before. He looked away from it, into the clear sky on the left.

Lt. Brown smiled. "Almost there, if we could cut through the sandstorm we'd be there in 10 minutes. As it is," he shrugged, "maybe 30 minutes."

Blair started to reply when a bright jewel in the sky caught his attention; rocketing upward it burst soundlessly into shards of red and yellow and white, reminding him of the elaborate fireworks displays on Chinese New Year in Cascade. He opened his mouth to say something just as the sound wave and then the explosion front hit the helicopter. Instantly the craft began to shake and rattle, every item not bolted down flying free in the cabin. The helicopter dipped and listed as it rode out the battering. All around them more deadly bright blossoms exploded, and the shaking intensified until Blair was sure the craft was about to be ripped apart. Behind him he could hear several of the Rangers shouting, but couldn't make out the words.

A quick look at the pilot's white, sweating face told Blair all he needed to know; they were in real trouble. And it wasn't just him this time, it was everyone in the helicopter. The Ranger captain, his men and the pilot. They'd come to his aid, saved him, they didn't deserve this. Alone in the desert he had been simply afraid, but now he was angry, even furious. He felt himself start to hyperventilate and in fury clenched his hands into fists and pounded on the perspex windscreen. "No, dammit, no! It can't happen like this!" he howled, his voice barely audible above the sounds of the helicopter shaking apart, the anti-aircraft fire and the storm that threatened them. His breath caught in his throat as he looked up into what would probably be his death.

He stared into the storm, mesmerized; at first he saw only chaos in the swirls and eddies of sand, but as he stared he became aware of a natural pattern in the storm, a coalescing set of curves turning away from him in an intricate and complex pattern. He felt something tighten in his chest, hard and burning, like a bound collection of energy. Spreading his hands wide on the windscreen, he leaned forward as far as the harness let him, until his forehead was almost touching. He felt the bindings on the energy release, and the tightness in his chest bloomed and expanded outward, throughout his body and though his hands and into the night in front of him. His vision began to gray out and he barely saw the curves of sand twist and pull apart to allow a narrow, protected space, a safe passage through the storm.

Suddenly the pilot gave a shout as the helicopter dropped down into a slipstream of calm, quiet air. On either side of them noise and chaos reigned, but their current path was clear, almost like the calm in the eye of a hurricane.

The helicopter pilot snorted and cuffed Blair lightly on the head. "You live under a lucky star, kid." He looked at Blair's hands, still spread wide of the windscreen. "Or, hell, maybe you are the lucky star."

Blair pulled his hands back into his lap and swallowed against the bile rising in his throat, concentrating on keeping the meager contents of his stomach in place. "Yeah, feeling real lucky here right now." 

He blinked as he looked out into the path of calm before them and wondered what had just happened. He looked own at his hands, which looked completely normal. He flexed them and decided he must have hyperventilated and the lack of oxygen had made him hallucinate. But for a moment, just a brief moment, he'd felt that energy, seen the faint blue charge nimbus around his fingers... 

He shook his head at his own thoughts. He was studying to be a scientist, he knew better. True, there were tribal shaman said to be capable of great feats of physical magic, but they were trained up from birth, born into the calling, not some short, skinny college kid from the Pacific Northwest who had followed his mother as she discovered and then discarded twelve religions in ten years. 

The remaining minutes of the flight were surreally quiet. He closed his eyes and wished the minutes by faster.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

There were medics with an ambulance waiting for them when the helicopter touched down at the base. Blair watched as the injured Ranger was quickly and efficiently hauled out and into the ambulance. He scrambled out of the helicopter the first second he could that didn’t interfere with the medics.

Lt. Brown reached out to shake his hand. "I gotta tell you, when I said we were going to have a wild ride, I had no idea. I've had some interesting missions before, but that one takes it."

Blair shook his hand. "Pretty memorable for my first time in a helicopter."

"You can fly with me anytime. Take care, Professor." He gave Blair a quick salute and then turned to meet the mechanics who were coming out to look over the damaged helicopter.

"What the hell you been doing to our baby?" Blair heard one of them start. "They have drones that are supposed to be used for target practice, dude-- oh, wait, this is Lt. Matt we're talking about..." They slapped the pilot on the back, laughing.

Blair heard Captain Connel chuckle behind him and turned. The ambulance had already pulled away, leaving only the captain and Sergeant Alvarez on the tarmac with him.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Alvarez nodded. "Medics say he'll be back on his feet in a couple of days and good as new in a couple of weeks."

Dizzying relief flashed over Blair and his knees sagged. He leaned against the open bay of the helicopter and felt strong hands grab him and push his head down. "Whoa, Professor, steady there. Put your head between your knees. That's it, kid, come on, just breathe. You're okay, we're all okay now."

Blair felt the embarrassment start in his toes and creep up. Passing out in front of these two Rangers would be humiliating and he clenched his fists and tried to steady his breathing and calm himself down. Cautiously, he looked up at the two men. Neither of them looked annoyed or disgusted.

"Back with us? You did pretty good tonight, kid, we'll make a Ranger of you yet."

"Me?" The word almost came out normal, with just the faintest hint of squeak.

"Sure, take a couple of inches of hair off, add fifty pounds of muscle, grow a few inches and you're all set." Connel grinned at him and slapped him on the back companionably. "We've got to go debrief, and the CO will want to talk to you. This way." He gave Blair a nudge in the right direction, and Blair began to walk. "Pretty good adventure for a college boy. When you get back you can say you flew in an Apache in Desert Storm."

Blair snorted, feeling marginally better now that his feet were on the ground. He felt safe and happy in the company of these two warriors, who seemed to accept him as part of their group. "Oh, right, like that line is going to come in handy in my future as an anthropologist."

"Stranger things have happened, Professor." The Ranger captain looked out at the mixed sky, the sandstorm whipping up to the east and south and the clear night sky to the west, where distant blossoms of anti-aircraft fire rose into the sky, opened in flares of red and yellow, and then fell back down to the ground, accompanied by a faint popping sound several seconds later. "Like tonight. Do things always work out like this for you?"

Blair shrugged. He hadn't thought about it in those terms before. "Well, yeah, usually somehow things work out." He smiled nervously. "It's not like it's anything I plan-- it just does."

He shook his head. "You need a full-time protector, Professor, if things like this happen to you."

"You applying for the job?"

The ice blue eyes warmed. "Me? No. But I have no doubt something is meant to work out for you, though."

~finis


End file.
